from Photographers' Blog:

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As the morning approached, reporters, photographers and cameramen from national and foreign media organizations gathered outside the Jinan Intermediate People's Court to cover the final chapter in the trial of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai.

from The Great Debate:

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In China, the political lens is focused on Bo Xilai, the disgraced former commerce minister and party chief of megalopolis Chongqing. While Bo’s contestation of the charges of bribery and abuse of power gripped the attention of the social media this week, Bo will probably not be a free man again and certainly not a public figure.

from Ian Bremmer:

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As China obsessives know, it is tough to read tea leaves when the water is as opaque as that surrounding China’s Politburo. In the wake of the Chinese leadership transition, we’re left to sift through the news in search of answers. There is plenty we do not know about the process or what its outcome will bring, but when it comes to underlying themes we can understand, it is possible to make some predictions.

from Ian Bremmer:

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This week -- chads willing -- Americans will finally put an end to four years’ worth of electoral Sturm und Drang. Only then can the country begin to ask the question that matters much more than who will win: Will anything change? On foreign policy, it’s increasingly clear that the answer is, for the most part, no.

from Thinking Global:

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Imagine that an American intelligence agency organizes an “exercise,” as one occasionally does, on how to manage an unwanted but inescapable Washington role in a Chinese leadership struggle. Throw in the following scene-setting facts:

from Compass:

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The death of an Englishman in Chongqing has acquired all the intrigue of a John le Carré novel with none of its charms. Despite the occasionally romantic descriptions of the disgraced leader Bo Xilai as a charismatic man of the people challenging the prerogatives of Beijing’s bureaucratic leadership, this is a story without heroes, in which no one’s hands are clean. For all the elements of murder, mystery and missing fortunes occupying the Western press, in China today the focus of the country’s political and economic leaders is on the cascading power struggle that is in progress and what it holds for the future management of the world’s second-largest economy.